Data Backup Digest

As the demand for professional data storage services continues to grow around the world, Microsoft has recently announced the opening of brand new data centers located in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. Not only does it solidify Microsoft's position is the first global service provider to offer cloud services from within the continent of Africa, but it boosts their overall cloud footprint to 54 regions within 140 different countries across the globe.

The Growing Deluge of Data

Per the latest reports, worldwide consumers generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day – and that number is on the rise. In fact, some recent innovations, like the Internet of Things (IoT), promise to jumpstart these figures even further in the coming months and years. While that's too much data to handle for any one company, including Microsoft, their recent efforts are certainly a step in the right direction.

Microsoft's latest plans were initially unveiled last year with their 2018 Cloud Africa report, but the two new data centers weren't opened until early 2019. Now that they're fully operational, the team is hoping to spur new growth and development throughout the region.

Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president of Azure Networking with Microsoft, introduced the new service regions by stating: "Microsoft Azure is now available from our new cloud regions in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The combination of Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure with the new regions in Africa will create greater economic opportunity for organizations in Africa, accelerate new global investment, and improve access to cloud and Internet services."

Khalidi backed up his statement by saying: "Microsoft has deep expertise in protecting data and empowering customers around the globe to meet extensive security and privacy requirements, including offering the broadest set of compliance certifications and attestations in the industry. We look forward to supporting more African enterprises in their cloud journeys and offering a trusted path to digital transformation."

A Clear Plan of Action

It's important to note that Microsoft isn't entering the region blindly – they've done their research. According to an early survey, 90% of companies surveyed in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa already had plans to increase their spending on cloud computing and related services in the near future.

As such, Microsoft hopes to capitalize on these initiatives as well as the plans of others – and they're in a great position to achieve that. They've already done extensive work throughout the local communities in terms of creating awareness and ensuring preparedness.

Ibrahim Youssry, Microsoft's GM for all African regions as well as Levant and Pakistan, spoke about this by saying: "We’re working with partners to accelerate cloud readiness and adoption in Africa, ensuring enterprises can deliver services to market faster, businesses can make more data-driven decisions, and the governments can better connect with citizens," and: "The combination of Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure with the new regions in Africa will now connect businesses with even more opportunity and customers across the globe."

To find out more information on Microsoft, including details on any of their cloud access regions, please visit {{https://azure.microsoft.com|azure.microsoft.com}}.